Texas joins effort to delay pending EPA pollution law

Updated 2:10 am, Thursday, September 22, 2011

WASHINGTON — Texas sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday in an effort to block a pending toxic-emissions rule that state officials say will cost jobs and raise the risk of electricity blackouts.

State Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office filed a petition for review of the regulation — the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule — in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, saying the state wasn’t given enough time to comment on the rules since they were finalized in July.

“Abbott is deeply concerned about these new federal regulations’ impact on the State of Texas, its electric grid and the Texans whose access to something as basic as electricity is threatened,” Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for Abbott, said in an emailed statement.

The rule, which goes into effect on Jan. 1, requires reductions in sulfur-dioxide and nitrogen-oxide emissions from power plants in 27 states including Texas.

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The initial plan only required Texas to cut nitrogen-oxide emissions during smog season, but in July the final rules included sulfur-dioxide cuts for Texas as well.

The lawsuit comes as the Obama administration on Wednesday threatened to veto a Republican-sponsored House bill that would delay the cross-state rule and a mercury-pollution rule and require a new interagency committee to analyze the business and consumer impacts of several EPA rules. The House will likely pass the measure Friday, but it faces an uphill battle in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The suit says Texas’ inclusion for sulfur-dioxide reductions in the cross-state rule was based on changes in the EPA modeling that the state didn’t get a chance to comment on, including readings from a single air-quality monitoring station in Madison County, Ill.

In seeking to block the rule, Texas joins Dallas-based power plant operator Luminant Generation Co., which filed suit last week saying it will have to shut down two power-generation units and several lignite coal mines and cut 500 jobs to comply. Kansas’ attorney general’s office announced Monday that it had also filed suit.

The EPA said in a statement that in Texas each year alone the rule will save 1,700 lives and bring $5.8 billion to $14 billion in health benefits.

Gina McCarthy, EPA’s top air-pollution official, said last week that utilities such as Luminant had plenty of opportunity to comment on the rule and they have until March 2013 to comply. McCarthy also defended Texas’ inclusion in the rule as based on sound science.

Wyn Hornbuckle, a spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department, declined to comment on Wednesday’s filing.

The House bill, known as the Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation Act, or TRAIN Act, is one of House Republicans’ latest efforts to delay or block several EPA rules over economic concerns.

“These rules will destroy jobs, raise energy prices and put our nation's electric reliability at risk,” Charlotte Baker, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Republicans, said in an emailed statement.

The White House criticized the TRAIN Act on the basis that the required analyses would “require the preparation of costly, unnecessary, and redundant reports.” Environmental groups have said the reports would be redundant because analyses with similar standards already are administered by the Office of Management and Budget.

The veto threat appeased environmental activists, who were disappointed when Obama decided earlier this month to delay new ozone standards until at least 2013.

“This is the President Obama we remember who stood up and made clear he wasn't going to give polluters a free pass to pollute our children's lungs,” said Franz Matzner, legislative director for climate and air at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington-based environmental group. “It's a welcome sign that the buck stops with the president.”

A floor amendment sponsored by Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., would delay both the mercury and cross-state rules by several more years. Additionally, a floor amendment from Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio, would require EPA to consider “feasibility and cost” in setting air standards. Currently EPA must draw up air rules with regard to “public health and welfare.”

Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Bobby Rush, D-Ill., on Tuesday blasted the Whitfield floor amendment, saying Republicans didn't give the public chance to comment on “radical changes” to how EPA works. Waxman is top Democrat on the full committee, and Rush is top Democrat on the Energy and Power Subcommittee.

“We urge you to pull your legislation from consideration and hold hearings on it, so that members and the public can understand the effect of your proposal before it is brought to a vote,” the two lawmakers wrote in a letter to Whitfield and House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich.

The House energy committee's Baker said: “These changes will ensure emissions standards are workable and achievable so as not to put jobs at risk.”